Close Encounters

Trading large, open spaces for intimate rooms, these homeowners got a private sanctuary full of big statements

By Mitchell Alan Parker

Published: September 4, 2012

Step inside any number of ultra-modern homes today and you’ll likely be met with soaring ceilings, stark-white décor and very few walls (the living room is also the kitchen and dining room, for example). While this flowing, open space approach has increasingly defined the contemporary design ethos (and we’re all for it), it’s left some homeowners on the fence about what to do when designing a new home. Those who want to embrace the modern motif but also harbor nostalgic passions for warm wood and intimate spaces are often met with a tough decision: Stick with the trend? Or buck it?

Each room from the next. For example, the living room, with its mod furniture contrasted with a black Steinway piano, is disconnected from the sunken dining room by a limestone half-wall fireplace. Meanwhile, a wood slat wall separates the kitchen space, and so on.

“The house is generous but doesn’t have large rooms. It’s the opposite of typical dream-home desires,” says architect Ernesto Cragnolino, who helped design the house and interiors with fellow AlterStudio partners Kevin Alter and Tim Whitehill.

And no place is this typical dream-home largesse bucked more than in the McVeys’ master bedroom. The space is located about midway up a tower, of sorts, an idea the architects had for feeling like you’re in the prow of a ship. While you’d expect the reclaimed old growth pine floored master suite to be one of the biggest rooms in the house, it’s actually one of the smallest, affirming their preference for intimacy.

At the top of the tower is another private space: the white room. It’s reserved specifically for listening to music. Chuck, who works as a psychologist, loves music and collecting records—he had the living room turntable anchored through the walls to a second foundation so there’s no skipping or vibration—and uses the room for his mono record collection, player and single mod chair in the middle.

“He thought it’d be cool and extra special,” says Alter. “It’s like the old Maxwell cassette tape commercial of the guy getting blasted by a wall of sound.”

The room is perched high at the top of the tower, and a few steps up leads to a rooftop patio that embraces the one-of-a-kind view. It’s one that will unlikely ever be spoiled, since the verdant green hills are protected as part of the Brightleaf Nature Preserve, which means the family has a lot of interacting with wildlife. Sightings of coyotes, skunks and deer are common occurrences. The rooftop patio is also a good vantage point to view the winding, leafy landscape by Mark Word.

The siting of the house to magnify this view was difficult, since it looks toward the west. “As architects, we often find ourselves looking for trouble,” Alter says. “Creating a house with a stunning view to the north isn’t that hard. The west, with direct sunshine and heat gain, is an interesting problem to solve through the design of a building.”